The Passion of the Christ!

I must confess the scenes of torture, at first very moving, got a little boring for me, except for when they were mediated through the eyes of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. The Virgin truly was co-bearing Christ's sufferings in this movie.

The most affecting part of the movie for me was just before Christ died when he said "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" I have never felt that question to be so apt as when I watched it here. That question before his death brought home to me the whole point of the Christian tradition: to know and love God with our honest rock-bottom heart, the part of us that is beyond physical and emotional suffering, beyond the reasoning mind. If we did not believe with this part of us that Jesus Christ is the way to the Father, then despite all of the suffering and the drama of the story, we would owe it to God to turn elsewhere. When I heard that question in the movie, I felt like I was standing next to the cross with all of humanity asking God the same thing. Not in an angry, rebellious way, and not because my emotions had gotten the best of me but with full sincerity and with the blessing of heaven. It was like all of prayer was in that moment.

Before watching this, I had never realized how radical a charge it was that Christ not only told Mary that the Beloved Disciple was her son, but also told the Beloved Disciple that Mary was his mother. It seems if Christ's only concern had been to see that Mary was cared for, the first statement would have been enough. It would have been like saying(I am writing my own script here): "Mother, I can't take this man's parents away, but if you want protection, you may look to him." In the movie John nodded when Christ said "Behold, your son", and you believed that John knew his responsibility. But Christ also told John(once again writing my own script): "She is now your real mother." Christ, it seems, was concerned that John cut his ties to his parents in a more radical way than John had envisioned when he confidently agreed to care for Mary. In other words, John was being asked to throw his own mother out on the street, if caring for her came into conflict with caring for Mary. To be stewards of the church is to take on a quiet, but strict ascesis: to stop nodding so confidently and naturally when Christ asks us to love the church: we must look deeper in ourselves, to the part of us that does not offer God assurances, that does not know in a natural way how to love, but that trusts God to love through us.